


The Secret Mother

by LostBerryQueen



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, The Book of Dust, The Secret Commonwealth, The Secret Commonwealth Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:47:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22112089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostBerryQueen/pseuds/LostBerryQueen
Summary: Lyra never expected to see her face again.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter
Comments: 14
Kudos: 98





	1. All My Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ludling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ludling/gifts).



Lyra’s skin crawled as she felt the disgust of the crowd. Her presence bore a hole through them like a cigarette pressed to skin. She tried so hard to be unnoticeable, to employ Will’s tactics, but this time it wasn’t working. 

She felt a gaze that was like cold water, and she turned to meet the eyes of a woman who was looking at her in shock. Lyra didn’t immediately register the face, but the emotions of the woman rolled through her like she was being hit by a magnetic current. 

Lyra wanted to reach for Pan and draw him close to her, and his absence stabbed her in the gut. 

The effect only lasted a moment, and the woman smiled as though Lyra were an acquaintance she had spotted—an acquaintance she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade. 

Her hair was streaked with two or three lines of gray, but she was still unmistakably beautiful. Lyra stood rooted to the spot in fascination and terror. 

“Lyra, what a pleasant surprise,” Mrs. Coulter said. 

Lyra found her face forming into a reflexive, polite smile. “A surprise indeed. I wasn’t expecting to find you...here.” 

“Well, old friends meet in unexpected places all the time.” 

The statement hurt, and Lyra felt tears coming to her eyes. She looked away, blinking to get rid of them. 

Lyra caught the golden monkey’s eye then and found him staring up at her in a familiar stern way that made her smile suddenly. 

“I see you still have your daemon,” Lyra said rudely. 

Mrs. Coulter blinked then recovered her smile, but Lyra could read the anger bubbling behind it. “These aren’t the best conversations to be having on the street,” Mrs. Coulter said confidentially. “Shall we go somewhere more private?” 

Lyra felt a strong impulse to run, but she recognized that was the 12-year-old inside of her, screaming in agony at the return of her sworn enemy, of her—but that didn’t matter anymore. 

They found themselves in a teashop, sitting at a table beside the window. Light streamed in around Mrs. Coulter, crowning her in the aura of a heavenly being. 

Lyra sipped the tea, carefully burning the length of her tongue. It was a welcome distraction from the sensations around her, and the tears roaring up inside of her, threatening to create a display of a storm. She wanted Pan beside her, fluffing up his fur in a wolf form, but he would never be a wolf again. 

Her childhood had left her defenseless. Tea and Pan’s absence—or at least the threat of it. Mrs. Coulter always seemed to be paired with these things. 

“You should be happy,” Lyra said. “Peoples’ daemons are disappearing all of the time now. I’m surprised that you haven’t gotten rid of yours.” 

Mrs. Coulter smiled indulgingly. “So you’ve taken an interest in experimental theology, I see? How wonderful! Do tell me you’re in school. It would be such a shame to let a bright mind go to waste.” 

Lyra’s throat clenched. She felt her cheeks reddening and she was filled with a sudden and deep embarrassment that she was currently attending the same school her mother had. She had been aware of it of course, but she had always managed to keep it as peripheral knowledge, but now it was sitting right in front of her, and she couldn’t bear for Mrs. Coulter to know... 

“I dropped out of school,” Lyra said flatly. “Failed all of my classes the first term.” 

“Well...academic knowledge isn’t the same as—you know your father was a bit like that too. Couldn’t ever focus long enough to read a book. So what have you been up to?” 

“Traveling. I—where is he? Lord Asriel, I mean?” Lyra found herself looking around, as if she were expecting him to pop up out of the crowd, late but never too far away from his lover. 

She missed the way Mrs. Coulter had to steady herself, grip the back of the golden monkey’s neck and trace the pattern of her tea mug. Pan wouldn’t have missed it of course, but he wasn’t around to keep watch for Lyra. 

“Lyra,” Mrs. Coulter began softly. “Your father didn’t make it through.” 

“Make it—make it through?” 

Mrs. Coulter sighed deeply and looked out the window. “It’s a lovely day.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “Truly lovely. I’m glad today’s the day we found each other again. Your father would have loved to see it.” 

“Tell me what happened. Tell me where he is.” 

“Where he is? I would have thought you had learned that Lyra. He’s everywhere. Everywhere and nowhere. As for what happened...” 

“They told me you were both dead. You both died. Saving—killing Metatron.” 

“I did the best I could to save your father, Lyra.” 

Lyra felt that this was a lie. 

“And I did the best I could to protect you. But I...I failed you. And I know it’s too late to make up for all of that now, but I would like to help you Lyra. I don’t want you to have to face...this alone. I daresay you could use my help.” 

Lyra almost spat something angry, but she bit it back. 

“You said...you wanted to be my mother, once.” 

Mrs. Coulter nodded. “I did.” 

“You should know that...I wanted to be your daughter once too, until you betrayed me.” Lyra found that her voice was gaining strength. “I don’t see what help you could offer, anyway. You’re just as powerless as me now.” 

Lyra felt a punch of satisfaction at the hurt she detected in Mrs. Coulter’s eyes. Apparently the years of falling through the void hadn’t dampened Mrs. Coulter’s hunger for power. 

Mrs. Coulter sighed. “Lyra, you’re not a child anymore. You have to make your own choices. But I highly advise that you consider my proposal carefully.” 

“I’m not a child anymore. So tell me the truth about something.” 

Lyra and Mrs. Coulter both held their breath. 

“Why didn’t you keep me when I was a baby?” 

Mrs. Coulter’s entire face had gone cold. “Because I didn’t care enough to.” 

She spoke simply, and Lyra felt her entire body washed with her mother’s honest lack of emotion. Lyra knew she was telling the truth. It was like cold fresh air dripping down into a coal mine. 

~ 

Mrs. Coulter’s first maternal feeling had been born of curiosity. She had been observing the procedures at the station carefully and had noticed an interesting pattern: about a third of the children called out for their mothers in distress before the operation. When she glanced through the files with mild interest, she saw that many of the children who did this were motherless. They had no mother to call to, but they did so anyway. Mrs. Coulter had of course experimented with this concept, sorting those with mothers and without mothers into different groups, varying the level of fear they experienced before the procedure—but she couldn’t find a variable that influenced how likely a child was to call out to a “mother” besides fear. If the fear level was high enough, they wouldn’t call out, and if it was low enough they wouldn’t either, but if she kept the fear at a medium level, a third of the children regardless of background would call out for a mother. 

The thought had been an innocent enough joke: would _her_ bastard call out for a mother? 

She had laughed as she went through her papers on the test results but the golden monkey had stiffened and glared at her. He looked posed to spring at Mrs. Coulter so she gave him a withering look. “Oh, don’t get so sentimental. I don’t need to be reminded about your ridiculous thoughts on the matter.” 

The monkey looked down, chastised and not brave enough to challenge her further. 

Mrs. Coulter had carried on deceptively fine enough, until the next procedure. The nurse was about to administer the drug that would knock the child unconscious, but this one was lively, and intelligent enough to realize that the intentions of the facility were less than benevolent. She kicked the nurse hard in the abdomen, and jumped off the table. The nurse swiftly grabbed her daemon, fingers clamping around its neck professionally, choking it before it could change form. The child’s mouth opened and formed a word as she lost consciousness. Mrs. Coulter dropped her pen. She could not conclusively say what the word had been, but something inside of her felt as though the child had said _mother_ and now suddenly, she was back in the bed, thighs stained with blood, looking down at an infant, barely old enough to be human, mouth gaping open at nothing, and she was calculating the force it would take to snap its neck, all while the golden monkey gazed at the child with dumb, loving eyes. Suddenly she wanted to brush the child’s soft cheek. She had been wrapped in blankets and Mrs. Coulter’s skin had never touched hers. She wanted to reach back through time, just to see if the warmth that hadn’t quite reached her, like a match that will not light, would come alive if she had pretended to love her child. 

The golden monkey reached up, handing her the fallen pen. She was too distracted to hit him like she normally would. She looked back over the papers. 

“Drug administered seven minutes after entering exam room,” the nurse said. 

Mrs. Coulter made a check mark in one of the boxes. The procedure was on time. On the edge of her awareness, she felt the golden monkey gloating. She would make him pay for it later. 

While she was falling through the void, Mrs. Coulter had entertained herself by arranging and rearranging all of the different lies she could tell Lyra, once they met again. Her favorite lies to practice were about her birth, and their separation. She wove tails of a desperate mother, searching everywhere for Lyra, and finally being persuaded that Lyra had tragically died in the flood. The hope and love and joy she had felt at learning that Lyra was in fact alive! She had laughed at this thought, while the golden monkey lunged towards her and swatted at her face. She hit him so hard he bounced against the wall of the void, which looked as soft as air but felt as hard as metal. She was nearly knocked unconscious by her own blow. She had felt a sudden pain grip her stomach, and the horrible thought: _what if Lyra really was dead? And what if she would fall through eternity without her, with only her lies and the horrible monkey to keep her company?_

At some point, she had forced herself to imagine telling Lyra the truth. She hadn’t cared about Lyra. There had been mild interest, of course. Enough for her to pursue her location around the time of the Great Flood, but it hadn’t taken long for other, more interesting and important matters to capture her mind. Why she loved Lyra now, why she cared so much about whether or not she lived or died, was as much a mystery to her as it was to anyone else. 

~ 

Lyra Belacqua had never been bothered—that she could remember—on an emotional level at least—by her motherless status. She had never felt that she needed a mother, just as she had never felt that she needed a third arm. What Mrs. Coulter had said had awakened some part of her that had been dormant—like poison that hides in the spinal cord. And now—daemonless, Will-less and with the truth of her beginnings Lyra found a new understanding of what it meant to be alone. It seemed that everything in her life clicked into place, made sense on a plane that was wordless and unexplainable in any sort of comforting deceitful dialogue. 

Hot tears rushed from her face as if desperate to escape her. 

Cold arms wrapped around her form, and she realized she was standing. 

Mrs. Coulter was still a little taller than her. 

There was nothing comforting in the embrace and it was clear to her that Mrs. Coulter was not accustomed to hugging people. 

_Neither am I._ Lyra mused. 

Mrs. Coulter was saying something softly but Lyra would never know what it was. She wasn’t sure if Mrs. Coulter was hugging her for the benefit of the people in the teashop who were watching the display or perhaps something else. 

Lyra wanted to say something—anything, to make it all stop—but the words were already dead inside of her. 

Somehow, she found her way out of Mrs. Coulter’s hold, and left the teashop without looking at the woman who had created her again. 

The golden monkey stood on the table and watched her go. Mrs. Coulter didn’t follow.   



	2. I've Been

One consequence of having fallen through the void was that time seemed to move differently for Mrs. Coulter now. In the void there was no time. Mrs. Coulter had found eternal life. With Asriel’s death, and without knowing Lyra was alive, it had been eternal suffering. Mrs. Coulter had discovered that the one condition to her desire for immortality was that she did not want to live without her family. 

She didn’t feel particularly rushed as Lyra left her again. That was Lyra’s pattern. Lies had never kept her, and so Mrs. Coulter had gambled that perhaps the truth would. 

Mrs. Coulter had more important matters to attend to than pursing Lyra—namely, finding Pantalaimon. If Lyra was in danger as a daemonless human, Pan was in much more as a humanless daemon. 

Lyra had been correct in her assessment that Mrs. Coulter could not fully utilize her previous power in the magisterium. Mrs. Coulter did, however, still have some connections. Or, at least, she knew of a couple vulnerable people she could manipulate who would be able to help her reach her goal. 

Mrs. Coulter found herself smiling. The golden monkey felt her joy at the opportunity the new challenge presented for her to use her talents. She drew him closer. 

~ 

Pan backed away in pure terror. Mrs. Coulter realized that her instinct to trap him in a corner might not have been the best idea. He could no longer change form, which greatly limited his ability to fight back, but Mrs. Coulter knew from experience not to underestimate her daughter or her daughter’s daemon. 

The golden monkey was posed to spring if Pan tried to make a run for it, but Mrs. Coulter held out her hands in a placating gesture. 

“I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help.” 

“When have you ever helped?” 

“I’ve always tried to help you. To keep you and Lyra safe. We need to find her.” 

“Fuck you.” 

Pan started to run and Mrs. Coulter gestured for the golden monkey to—but he was already ahead of her. Mrs. Coulter sighed and closed her eyes regretfully. 

She couldn’t watch as the golden monkey and Pan fought, though she listened until Pan went silent.   
Holding Pan, the golden monkey leapt into Mrs. Coulter’s arms and she carried them both back to her hotel room.   
  


  
Pan’s unconscious form was secured in the cage. The golden monkey perched beside the cage, fingers curled around the metal bars. He wanted to stroke Pan comfortingly, but he didn’t dare go into the cage and risk another confrontation when Pan awoke. 

There was water and food set out in the cage, and a soft blanket. 

Mrs. Coulter sat in one of the comfy armchairs and glanced at the cage periodically from across the room. Her insides twisted uncomfortably and her face was full of sadness and regret. If this were anyone else she would have found it funny, but she almost couldn’t bear to treat Lyra’s daemon this way. There was little comfort in the fact that for the time being Pan was safe—because if anyone could escape the cage and get themselves into danger again it was Lyra’s soul. 

When Pan awoke the golden monkey started cawing excitedly. Pan’s eyes swept over the bars of the cage and he gulped. 

“You were supposed to be dead,” he said loudly. 

Mrs. Coulter smiled. Lyra’s daemon seemed to be doing his best to affect a calm and cool air, but she knew he was frightened. She stood and Pan flinched. 

She paused, giving him a sympathetic look. 

Pan glared back fiercely. 

Mrs. Coulter situated herself on the edge of the bed so that she was closer to Pan’s cage, which was on the table, but not so close that she would be more intimidating than necessary. 

“Life’s full of little disappointments, isn’t it?” Mrs. Coulter said softly. 

Pan lapped at the water, eyeing the golden monkey as he did so. He sniffed at the plate of food and ate two of the grapes slowly. He nibbled on the edge of a slice of cheese. 

“You always did treat Lyra like a pet,” he said finally. 

Mrs. Coulter raised an eyebrow. 

“I never liked you. But she did. She would have stayed with you forever if she hadn’t found out what you were doing.” 

Mrs. Coulter realized the bitterness in his voice wasn’t just directed towards her—it was also directed towards Lyra. 

Mrs. Coulter glanced at the golden monkey pointedly. Reluctantly, the golden monkey let go of Pan’s cage and made his way to her side. Mrs. Coulter forced herself to lean down slowly, to pick him up into her arms and hug him. She could tell the golden monkey liked it, and she swallowed disgust as the golden monkey nuzzled closer to her. She carefully watched Pan’s reaction to the display and found there a look of despair and longing. She was partially to blame, she knew, for Lyra and Pan’s predicament. She had never modeled proper human-daemon behavior. She had grown closer to her daemon during her quest to protect Lyra, but she still couldn’t help but be disgusted by him and feel scorn for his weakness. 

“I can help you and Lyra reunite,” Mrs. Coulter said slowly, stroking the golden monkey as she did so. 

Pan’s eyes were wide. Then they narrowed. “You can’t fool me. I always saw through you and your games. So do your worst, but don’t expect me to go along with it. And you don’t, do you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered with the cage.” 

Mrs. Coulter fixed him with a small smile, eyes full of compassion. “I can see the strain it’s put on you. Being so far away from her. But you’re brave. You’ve always been so, so brave.” 

Pan was wavering. 

Mrs. Coulter went in for the killing bite. “I spoke with Lyra recently.” 

“You...Lyra...” Pan’s anger was gone as he found himself submitting to weakness. The betrayal was like a sword held over his fallen body. The thought that Lyra had been with _Mrs. Coulter_ but not him. 

Mrs. Coulter watched him with delight dancing in her eyes. She was doing something she loved, she was winning. 

“Where...where is she?” Pan’s voice had become higher pitched. He was looking around the room as if he expected Lyra to be hiding behind the curtains, under the bed... 

Mrs. Coulter laughed—a musical noise like bells, demanding the attention of the sleeping congregation. 

“My darling Pan, when has that girl ever stayed in one place for long?” 

“So you didn’t capture her too?” Pan said, forcing aggression into his voice, hoping his disappointment didn’t show. 

“No, and I won’t keep you here for long.” She said this as casually as if they were meeting for tea. The golden monkey jumped off her lap. “I have something that I believe you and Lyra may want.” 

Mrs. Coulter stood and opened the cage. Pan didn’t move. Mrs. Coulter sat back down, unable to conceal her satisfaction and amusement. The golden monkey was on the floor, looking back and forth between Mrs. Coulter and Pan. He jumped onto the table beside Pan’s cage, a longing look on his face, but he didn’t move towards Pan. 

“There is a way to cross between worlds. There is a way for you and Lyra to see Will again.” 

Pan bared his teeth instinctively at the name. “How did _you_ know about...” _Lyra still thought of Will._ Pan’s relationship with her had never been the same since the betrayal, but he suspected that Will’s departure was a large rock in the divide between them, cutting them both and pushing them farther apart. 

“Guess.” Mrs. Coulter was enjoying this too much. 

“You have access to an alethiometer. And someone who can read it.” 

Mrs. Coulter had spied on her brother. If it had been necessary, she would have revealed to him that she was alive. Luckily, she discovered Olivier Bonneville, who was even easier to manipulate than his father had been (admittedly Gerard Bonneville had at times been difficult to control). 

Olivier was under the impression that if Mrs. Coulter told Marcel Delamare of her living existence, that the hunt for Lyra would cease. Mrs. Coulter had a different feeling on the matter. Her brother thought he loved her, but underneath that love, hidden from himself was a deep hatred. He could never acknowledge it, because their mother had taught him that Marisa was perfect, that Marisa was to be idolized while he was to be shamed. Currently, the part of himself that hated Marisa was directed at Lyra. His actions were predictable. If he knew the truth, they would be completely unpredictable. 

There was also a part of Marisa that knew...that if Lyra was no longer in danger, she would no longer need her. 

“Not all of the doors between the worlds are closed,” Mrs. Coulter continued. “It took me—well to you—what would seem quite a while, for me to find my way back to your world. With dear Olivier’s help it shouldn’t take much time at all to find the doors.” 

“But we don’t need you,” Pan said. “Lyra can read the alethiometer.” 

“Ah, of course. How could I have forgotten? Perhaps she’s already found him then, and left you here...” 

“Lyra wouldn’t do that because...but you think...?” 

Mrs. Coulter was nodding. “You do see, don’t you?” 

“But I’m not—I won’t leave this world without Lyra. It’s too...too much...” 

“You needn’t worry. Once I’ve acquired your permission, I’ll send dear Olivier after Will.” 

There was silence. Pan studied the oh so soft blanket underneath him, in the cage. _Trap, trap, trap, trap. It was all a trap._

Pan moved a paw forward. He hovered it over the metal bar that separated cage from open free table. He pressed his paw down onto the metal hard, so half of his paw was in the cage and half the outside world. He expected something to happen, an electric shock perhaps, but there was nothing. 

He held it there for a moment; then emerged from the cage. He stood, staring at Mrs. Coulter. She looked _so, so_ much like Lyra. Even her air of danger was something Lyra had acquired in the past few years. Disgust and repulsion rippled through him, but it was the same sort of feeling he had around Lyra. 

Pan jumped off the table. It felt like he was walking through fire. He jumped onto Mrs. Coulter’s lap. Mrs. Coulter gasped, moving her hands to keep them away from him. 

Pan dug his claws into Mrs. Coulter’s legs. So much like Lyra, but not quite. _Will_ _will_ _bring Lyra back._ Pan wasn’t sure if he managed to say the words allowed, because it was then that he fainted. 

When he awoke he was on the end of the hotel bed, the golden monkey curled around him. Mrs. Coulter slept on her side, keeping her feet carefully away from them. 


	3. Telling the Truth

Pan crawled up the bed and stood in front of Mrs. Coulter’s face. She had a puzzled, troubled expression on her face as she slept, that reminded Pan of how Lyra would often sleep until the philosophy books calmed the emotion out of her.

Mrs. Coulter’s eyes snapped open and she gasped, moving her head away. “Pan,” She exhaled. “You startled me.”

“I...” Pan’s eyes dropped to the blanket. “You look like Lyra.”

Mrs. Coulter sighed. She put her head back down on the pillow and drew the blanket up over her face. Pan saw tears glittering in her eyes before she pulled the blanket all the way over her.

Pan felt compelled to crawl under the blanket with her.

Mrs. Coulter sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “Well, this is cozy.”

She looked at Pan challengingly.

Pan felt suddenly nervous.

“Can I—”

“No.”

“But just—”

“No. Don’t go there. Pan, you know how Lyra would feel about it.”

“Lyra isn’t here.”

Mrs. Coulter laughed, then the laughing became uncontrollable cackling. She seemed so giddy and unlike the composed Mrs. Coulter Pan knew. She was nervous.

Pan leapt forward and licked at the tears rolling down Mrs. Coulter’s face. Mrs. Coulter went silent and still. The tears continued.

Pan curled up on her neck.

Mrs. Coulter reached up and stroked him gently.

Pan held his breath, warmth that he had been deprived of for so long was surrounding him overwhelmingly.

“Thank you,” Pan said softly, before he was pulled in by the gravity of sleep.   


~

Olivier sent word that Lyra was in danger. He knew where she was headed, so Mrs. Coulter and Pan made the long journey to find her.

Pan and the golden monkey took turns hiding in Mrs. Coulter’s coat. Pan found that he enjoyed pretending to be her daemon, if only because it meant he could socialize normally again. The golden monkey was increasingly uncomfortable with it, and Pan was unsure why.

When Mrs. Coulter did see Lyra again, she didn’t immediately recognize her, and thought that perhaps Olivier had made a mistake.

Her normally brown hair had been dyed black, and a broken pair of spectacles lay discarded on the floor beside the lump of blankets that barely passed for a bed where Lyra lay, apparently unconscious.

Lyra’s face was swollen beyond recognition and lined with deep cuts. Mrs. Coulter reached towards her, but stopped before she touched her.

She was filled with rage and wanted to murder the two peasants that had sheltered Lyra—if only to have someone to take it out on. When she found who had done this...she was going to make them experience new heights of suffering before she finished killing them.

She was picturing exactly what she would do to them when she heard a pathetic little cough and all of the anger was sharply whisked away.

“Lyra,” she breathed.

Lyra opened her eyes, blinking up at Mrs. Coulter. “Mother...”

The helpless word went through Mrs. Coulter’s heart and traveled down her body. “Yes,” Tears brimmed in her eyes and fell. “I’m here.”

Lyra reached up and took Mrs. Coulter’s hand, squeezing it weakly.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Mrs. Coulter said. “We’ll find a nice doctor for you and—”

“No doctor.”

“What, dear?”

“No doctor will see me. Got no daemon.”

Pan crept further into view and that was when Lyra’s eyes fell on him.   
Pan froze.

“You,” Lyra seemed to come alive. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat facing him, staring.

Without warning, she lunged.

The golden monkey grabbed  Pantalaimon and pulled him out of the way while Mrs. Coulter’s arms wrapped firmly around Lyra’s waist. In her weakened state, it shouldn’t have  took much to hold her back, but Lyra was clearly pumped with adrenaline.

“You foul rat!” Lyra struggled in Mrs. Coulter’s arms furiously. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you and you’ve been...” Lyra’s tirade was interrupted by her tears. “You’ve been with  _ her. _ ”

Hurt rolled through Mrs. Coulter, crashing into a shore of rage. Mrs. Coulter wrestled Lyra to the ground, putting a knee on her back to keep her in place.

“Let go of me!” Lyra screeched, beating the ground with her hands and feet then dissolving into anguished sobs at the newfound pain in her broken hand.

Mrs. Coulter noticed the injury and drew away slightly. Hovering over Lyra she bent and took Lyra’s swollen hand in her own, examining it carefully. She pressed down a little and felt the broken bone move.

Lyra screamed.

Pan was near unconscious in the golden monkey’s arms.

Mrs. Coulter straightened up. “This pain will someday pass,” she said over Lyra’s sobs.

Mrs. Coulter looked at the golden monkey with calm aggression in her eyes then nodded towards Lyra.

The golden monkey obediently brought Pan towards Lyra’s face.

“You must learn to live with all parts of yourself, Lyra.”

Mrs. Coulter watched closely. As she had expected, Lyra was in too much pain to attack. When Pan reached forward to nuzzle her face, Lyra closed her eyes in acceptance.

Mrs. Coulter smiled.


End file.
